MOTORSPORT: Long, hard road for starters

The international motorsport year kicks off with lots of hard yards – well, kilometres.

Hundreds of competitors assembled in Lima, the capital of Peru, face two weeks of the most extreme conditions after tomorrow’s start of the 40th Dakar – and the 10th in South America – as they head for Cordoba in Argentina, via Bolivia.

Toby Price is Australia’s main man – and one of very few Aussies – on the Dakar this year, aiming to deliver KTM its 17th straight motorcycle victory.

Price made history as the only Australian to win the marathon rally two years ago but broke a leg last year.

The Dakar cars category will be a tussle between Peugeot, MINI and Toyota, with Frenchman Stephane Peterhansel (Peugeot) always the man to beat but Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah two-time victor, in a Toyota HiLux this time, perhaps the main challenger to ‘Monsieur Dakar’.

Al-Attiyah is a specialist on sand and there will be an abundance of dunes through Peru in the first week.

A year ago Sebastien Loeb came within five minutes of denying countryman and teammate Peterhansel his seventh Dakar win on four wheels (he’d already won six times on two wheels) and nine-time world rally champion Loeb could be a strong contender again, although the dunes are a worry for him.

Daytona Roar before the 24
At Daytona in the US state of Florida a field of 50 sports and GT cars are set for the three-day ‘Roar before the 24’ this weekend in preparation for the 24 Hours of Daytona at the end of the month.

The Aussies confirmed on the entry list at Daytona are Ryan Briscoe in one of Chip Ganassi’s Ford GT’s in the GT Le Mans class and US-based Queenslander Kenny Habul in a Mercedes AMG in the GT Daytona class.

It will be with Habul (and Frenchman Tristan Vautier) in just such a Merc – entered by Scott Taylor Motorsport – that seven-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup will defend his Bathurst 12-Hour ‘title’ on February 4.

The ‘Roar’ marks the official return of Roger Penske’s sports car team, now representing Acura – Honda’s luxury brand in North America – with two entries among the 10 Daytona Prototype Internationals (DPIs).

There are four Cadillacs, which dominated last season, a pair of Nissans and two Mazdas, now prepared by the most successful Le Mans team of all time, Germany’s Joest Racing.

Formula 1 great Fernando Alonso is there driving an LMP2 Ligier for the United Autosports of McLaren commercial chief Zak Brown as part of the Spaniard’s preparation for a Le Mans assault mid-year with Toyota. Canada’s F1 driver Lance Stroll also is driving an LMP2 car entered by Jackie Chan.

The ‘Roar’ includes a one-hour, 45-minute race for the 20 prototypes and a qualifying session for the other classes.

World Rally Championship
When the WRC begins with the Monte Carlo Rally at the end of January he won’t be in the field, as had been speculated, but he will do three later rounds for Citroen in one of its C3s – Mexico on gravel in March, the French tarmac event on the island of Corsica in April and the mixed-surface Rally of Catalunya in late October.

Irishman Craig Breen will step out of a C3 to make way for Loeb on those rallies, while Northern Irishman Kris Meeke is booked in for all 13 rounds with Citroen.

Loeb has not competed full-time in the WRC since 2012, concentrating these days on rallycross and the rally raids, but his record 78 WRC event victories are as many as 11 drivers now in the championship have won between them – Sebastien Ogier 40, Jari-Matti Latvala 17, Thierry Neuville six, Meeke five, Andreas Mikkelsen three, Ott Tanak two, and Mads Ostberg, Dani Sordo, New Zealander Hayden Paddon, Esapekka Lappi and Elfyn Evans have scored between them.

After Ogier’s fifth world title last year – in a Ford Fiesta for M-Sport after four with departed dominator Volkswagen – the 2018 season will be the 14th straight to start with a Frenchman as the reigning world champion.

Ford confirmed virtually on Christmas eve an increase in its support for Malcolm Wilson’s M-Sport that Ogier had made a condition of remaining with the team in the face of an offer to return to Citroen.

Ogier has said that taking his fifth title as an underdog in a privateer team (he won only two rallies to the four of Hyundai’s Neuville, and the Belgian’s 56 stages wins were 26 more than any other driver) gained him more recognition than the four with VW.

While Ford is stepping up its technical input to Wilson after five years very much in the background at lesser expense, M-Sport will appear ahead of Ford in the team’s official name and Autosport’s rallies editor David Evans has noted: “This commitment comes on a very different level to (Ford’s) financial input in the late 1990s”.

However, Evans also observed: “Depending on which list you look at, the WRC now has three of the top five biggest carmakers (it would have been four out of five if that chap hadn’t tinkered with Volkswagen’s emissions …) involved and that’s a tremendous shot in the arm for the series.”

Australian Rally Championship
The news is not so good on the Australian Rally Championship. Coffs Harbour privateer Nathan Quinn who toppled Subaru-backed Molly Taylor for last year’s title may not contest any rounds this year.

Quinn has sold his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX and says he won’t be buying a new car, although he’s looking at leasing options and contemplating outings in New Zealand and WRC rounds in Europe.

Global Rallycross Championship
America’s Global Rallycross Championship, in which Chris Atkinson races for Subaru and to which Tony Cochrane became an adviser in late 2015, will allow electric cars to compete against its 600-horsepower combustion-engined ‘Supercars’ from next year.

“This is perfect for what’s going on out there in the marketplace – people doing comparisons,” says GRC chief Colin Dyne. “Now they can see a comparison on the racetrack.”

German DTM
While Supercars still eyes new overseas races again after earlier short-lived expansion in Asia, the Middle East and the US, Germany’s touring car championship, the DTM, will have half its rounds outside its homeland this year.

New to its calendar are events at Italy’s Misano circuit and Britain’s Brands Hatch.

It already had rounds at Budapest in Hungary, Zandvoort in the Netherlands and Spielberg in Austria.

The first and last of the German rounds in the six-month series from early May to mid-October are at Hockenheim, with others at Lausitzring, Norisring and Nurburgring.